SAN JACINTO: Two school officials on to new jobs

Two veteran San Jacinto Unified School District administrators are leaving for new challenges in Washington, D.C., and Huntington Beach.

Marianna Vinson, whose single mother used to sell plaster statues on Winchester Road to support her children, will join the federal Department of Education as deputy director for the Office of English Language Acquisition, a political appointment in the Obama administration. She has been San Jacinto’s assistant superintendent of educational services since 2012.

Connie Polhemus, a former Hemet Unified board member and an educator for 26 years, is fulfilling her dream to return to a school site as principal at Peterson Elementary in Huntington Beach. Most recently, she has been director of student, community and personnel support.

Both have been with the district for more than a decade, and Polhemus followed Vinson some years ago as principal of Hyatt Elementary School.

“The problem you have is that talented people are difficult to keep unless you can continue to feed their need for development,” said school board President John Norman.

Vinson, 38, an educator for more than 15 years, was planning to leave, but not for D.C. She was accepted into the Harvard University doctorate program this fall, but during the application process, she reconnected with former co-worker Libia Gill, who was with Chula Vista Elementary School District when Vinson started teaching bilingual kindergarten years ago. Gill will be her new boss.

Vinson said she applied to the Harvard program because she didn’t want to go to her deathbed wondering “what if.” She will reapply for admission in 2016. Her husband and two young children will join her back East.

Her new office is considered the “warehouse and information for the best English-learner services,” she said. The office administers grants for higher education training and Native American education.

“Her growth potential is so great that this is just another step in her maturation,” Norman said, adding Vinson will be able to help more children.

One of the accomplishments she is most proud of is the almost two dozen banners posted in May on San Jacinto city streetlights heralding college aspirations of San Jacinto High seniors.

Students showed off banners to their families. “To know that they were so proud makes me happy,” she said.

She also is proud of how the entire district has taken to heart the focus on student writing, with a catch phrase of “our pens are on fire.” Even the custodians ask the children what they are writing about.

After high school in Chula Vista, Vinson was awarded a scholarship to Stanford University, where she earned a bachelor’s in political science. She later earned a master’s in educational administration from National University.

She taught in Chula Vista, where she was raised, before she was hired by San Jacinto Unified in 2003. She was assistant principal at elementary schools before she served as Hyatt principal. She transferred to the district office in 2007 as director of curriculum and instruction.

Polhemus, 59, has spent her adult life in Hemet. One of her two adult sons lives in Huntington Beach, so she is a frequent visitor and already feels connected to the community. Her other son and two grandchildren live in Corona.

“I really began to have a passion to return to the school site to become a principal again,” she said. “This is a dream come true,” she said of the school that includes a preschool and programs for gifted and disabled students..

Another plus is the weather, as she is training for the 2015 Boston Marathon.

Polhemus has got a lot of energy, Norman said. “I think she kind of was reborn with this fitness thing she got into. Her enthusiasm has been just unbelievable.”

Polhemus served on the Hemet school board from 1988 until she became a Hemet teacher in November 1991. She earned a master’s degree in management from University of Redlands and later earned credentials in general and special education elsewhere. She was hired as a San Jacinto assistant principal in 2004, where she worked at three schools before moving to the district office five years ago.

She said one of her proudest moments came when Hyatt became the first district school to exit program improvement, part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act that required meeting accountability targets and showing improved test scores.